Open Science Codefest: At the nexus of environmental sciences and computer programming

Submitted by french on 21 July 2014 - 12:21pm

Since its inception, NCEAS has helped advance ecological and environmental research, data informatics, and trained thousands of scientists on how to use the synthesis research approach to science. Now, in the same spirit of collaboration and commitment to advancing scientific knowledge, NCEAS invites environmental scientists and computer programmers to come together and participate in the first Open Science Codefest, September 2-4, 2014, in beautiful Santa Barbara, California!

Inspired by hack-a-thons and organized in the participant-driven, “unconference” style, the Open Science Codefest is for anyone with an interesting problem, solution, or idea that intersects environmental science and computer programming. This is the conference where you will actually get stuff done -- whether that's coding up a new R module, developing an ontology, working on a data repository, creating data visualizations, dreaming up an interactive eco-game, discussing an idea, or any other concrete collaborative goal that interests a group of people. Registration is free.

Do you have a coding project that could benefit from collaboration, or software skills you’d like to share?

Over the course of three days, participants will have an opportunity to:

· Design. Collaborate with others to conceive, extend, and design software for open science

· Code. Put ideas into reality in real time and prototype open source software for science with others.

This conference will be organized to stimulate productivity and community building, while giving ample opportunities for collaborative coding and design sessions, lightning talks that promote communication among participants as activities unfold, and birds-of-a-feather discussions surrounding topics such as: data science, data management, semantics, and visualization. Participants are also encouraged to propose new topics to discuss at the conference.